All For Some

Chapter 61: Meeting the Hunter

Shirokuro crouched on the roof of the tallest building in Hosu, scanning the streets below with the help of the Zoom quirk. He was taking the chance to practice stabilizing his sights to effectively use the vision quirk, despite the slight nausea of adding a new quirk.

The Sleep Deprived was truly wonderful. The sun had been down for a good while already, but Shirokuro still felt fresh as in the morning. The quirk had even taken away tiredness he had accumulated during the day before getting it, and it was effortless to use. The quirk was nearly automatic. He could choose to not use it, but it was easier not to.

No wonder the previous owner ended up overusing it. Feeling like this, it was easy to forget there was even such a thing as need for sleep. The effect was similar to almost forgetting permanence of serious injuries on other people when he had regeneration. If Izuku didn't worry about those around him so much he might have forgotten that altogether.

He blinked and zoomed out before zooming in again on a different place. That was easier than trying to move the spot he was looking at any significant distance while zoomed in. A group of heroes got out of a car in a nearby parking lot and scattered in different directions; some alone, some in pairs. One flew up over the rooftops, causing Shirokuro to duck, but she headed in another direction, leaving rest of the group and Shirokuro behind. He reminded himself to not make the mistake of forgetting to look up as most people do.

He still had to check the people below. Doing his best to check each of them, none raised any special familiarity or interest from his research, except... He turned back to one of the heroes, referencing his memories of the heroes in the area. When the man stepped straight under a streetlight it clicked.

"Manual," he muttered under his helmet.

"Do you wish something?" Kurogiri asked behind him.

"I'm going to follow a hero. Let's go to that roof."

He pointed at a building down the street. He would have rather stretched his legs and trained with his jets leaping from building to building, but no one could see Shirokuro using that quirk. Also, his control was still limited. He could leap fine but relied solely on his agility to avoid a need for regeneration with any significant height or distance. Instead, he hopped on a little warp gate that looked like a dark puddle on the roof, a puddle with a whirlpool.

He landed on the other roof and after a few seconds of reorienting rushed to the edge. He was now ahead of Manual who was walking towards him. Shirokuro continued following him, switching between watching him and scanning the surrounding roofs. Mostly the hero just walked around and waved to people that did so to him first. Shirokuro started mentally counting what share of people did so, trying to estimate how these people felt about the man, not that it would describe his true personality. Shirokuro often scanned the alleys Manual passed in case of familiar faces.

He eventually spotted one, but it wasn't one of the ones he was looking. This one made him frown under his helmet. Manual stopped to chat with Native. They seemed to be friendly. Tenya's chosen internship hero was looking worse moment by moment.

They walked together a moment, but a few blocks later stopped by a crossroads, raising their hands in goodbye. Shirokuro froze still for a moment, his eyes darting between the two to the best of his ability at such zoom level. Part of Izuku wanted to keep an eye on Manual to learn everything he could about the man, but that wasn't Shirokuro's mission here.

He leaped between adjacent buildings of the same height to follow Native, the so-called hero he at least knew to be rotten and with at least some people aware of it. If he wanted to discover Stain, he couldn't afford to track every hero individually hoping they were also rotten in the eyes of the killer.